Sunday, February 05, 2017

We all have one in our pantheon
of friends and family. Many of us have several. You know the type - Homo
trumpus erraticus better known as the Anti-Trump Grandstander (ATG).

While appearing normal on the
outside and indeed reasonable on most fronts the ATG is not always easy to
spot. They carry very little of the outer baggage of SJWs, rarely wear their
politics on their sleeves and more often than not disappear into the political
ether appearing rather clear thinking across most axes.

That is until the subject of one
Donald J. Trump comes to the fore. Then as if ignited by a trigger catalyst the
ATG springs to life. Gone is the previous demeanour of controlled rationalism,
enter stage left is a symphony of vents, ridicules and desperation pleas that draws
uncritically from the memosphere of the Anti-Trump world.

Trump we are told is the
harbinger of a Brave New World, a reactionary of the worst type, a fanatic but
most importantly all that there is wrong with western civilization wrapped into
one. There is no debate. He is both evil and stupid and all arguments to the
contrary are ridiculous. So goes the reasoning.

Although I have much reservations
about Trump (I wanted Rubio to win the nomination for all of those reasons) I
take great pains to hear such an individual out, supplying the necessary
counter balances as there is some pedagogic value to be obtained in
understanding how emotion drives political thought. The ATG is a textbook case
as they have chosen to filter all information through a confirmation strainer
and therefore see no grey in a polarized world where they are clearly on the
side of good. The fact that Trump supporters have a completely different
interpretation is therefore of little value. Not when parameters are so clearly
defined.

With Trump there is no middle
ground as ATGs see it, so even giving ‘The Donald’ a fair chance makes no
sense. The best that can be done is to grin and bear these next four years with
the hope that Congress and indeed the Supreme Court rein in the excesses of his
Administration. In short it is dystopia for now. One ATG even told me that he
was thinking of moving to New Zealand, so dismal is the outlook.

Now Trump is certainly an unknown
quantity when juxtaposed against the current political environment. On words
alone he appears to have bucked the consensus with respect to the global focus
and when one distills out the root cause of such opposition to him I suspect
that his walk away from the Hegelian notion of historical direction is at the
epicentre of such grievance.

Many people have invested
strongly, not only financially but more importantly emotionally, on the emergence of a global
worldview. Free Trade is a belief shared by both the centre left and right
across the West and the vast majority of those in the supposed ‘know’ see it as
a necessary step in the march of history (an illusion if ever there was one).
While opinions differ with respect to technicalities, Internationalism is
viewed as a forward looking policy that will benefit humanity in the long run.
To oppose it smacks of a regression to a bygone era of nationalism that ripped
open the planet with global war. Trade brings peace and who in their right mind
doesn’t want peace?

Trump of course on the surface
enters as the antithesis of such a worldview – his buy America, anti-illegal
immigration stance and apparent backtrack from Internationalism fly in the face
of the vested paradigm. While much of his words have been distorted and need to
be analyzed in context, at first glance they tap into the visceral and pour
cold water on the emotional commitment that has underpinned a near uniformity
of thought. Consequently they are attacked with a rigour of disdain as if he is
cutting at the essence of what defines the individual.

This need not be the case.
Trumpism is not anti-Internationalist. That ship has long since sailed on that
front. What he will do though is to redefine and readjust America’s role within
the broader global spectrum. The nation needs it. High U6 unemployment for much
of the Obama tenure and an extremely slow recovery are indicative of problems
within the larger economy that could have implications for the future. Whether
his plans will prove productive are of course debatable but something has to be
done.

I have mentioned this to many an
ATG but most are unreceptive. While some acknowledge the argument especially
when framed in the context of blue collar jobs I sense that there is another
factor which makes the anxiety around Trump even louder and its much more than
the coarseness of his personality and his way with words. It comes down to the
issue of control.

With Trump there is a sense that
control of the environmental factors that impact one’s lives will be lost
especially if a status quo is disrupted. ATGs give lip service to change but in
their heart are resistant to it. Despite this apparent irony there is a
conservatism that runs through progressive and liberal thinking and like some
of the conservatism on the right it wants to safeguard its gains. With
progressives/liberals this drive may even be stronger as environmental factors
are so much more powerful within this thought base.

There is a certain urgency about the Trump Presidency that
has forced many a denizen of the West to question the direction that the
civilization has been moving. As a classical liberal I have entertained these
thoughts for some time.

While I celebrated the collapse of Soviet style
Marxist-Leninism in the early 1990s I was not convinced that the finality of
the great struggle between the powers as envisioned in Francis Fukuyama’s work The End of History and the Last Man (1992), was
about to dawn . Samuel Huntington’s TheClash
of Civilizationsand the Remaking of
World Order (1993) made more of an impression then and I believe that it
looms even larger now.

Now Huntington himself was not a Republican. During the Carter Administration he served in
a coordinating capacity at the National Security Council and for more than half
a century he played an integral role on the Harvard Faculty where he headed the
Center for International Affairs. At one time he was a speech writer for Adlai
Stevenson.

His understanding of
foreign affairs has almost a prophetic feel to it. Huntington argued that the
pivotal clash defining the near future would be a series of confrontations
between specific civilizations. These civilizations share very powerful cultural
values, historical connections and in group similarities that set them apart
from each other thereby transcending both economics and political constraints
(and in many cases superficialities).

Huntington delineated several civilizations that he aptly
named the West, Orthodoxy, Buddhist, Confucian, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin
America, Muslim and Hindu. He also identified some cleft countries that were split
between various civilizations such as Nigeria and Sri Lanka, as well as ‘standalones’
like Japan. Most civilizations gravitate
toward a nexus of power - China in the case of Confucian, Russia with respect
to Orthodoxy and India in the Hindu context.

In defining the West Huntington grouped together the United
States, Canada, Western and Central Europe, Australia and Oceania. While most
of the nation states draw somewhat from a Christian (Catholic-Protestant) moral
core they have incorporated within their framework a universalism (certainly evident in
the elite) that at its root sees a world that would be all the better if others
adopted enlightenment driven western values.

Standing in opposition to the West is the Muslim world of
the Middle East, Northern/Western Africa, Albania, Bosnia, Bangladesh,
Pakistan, the Maldives, Comoros, Brunei and Malaysia (as defined by Huntington).
Many of these states are gripped by an Islamic resurgence that is hostile to
Western Civilization and sees itself as a viable alternative worldview.

Strife and conflict would be inevitable and indeed in the
post 911 world Huntington’s view carries some weight. However this is not the
only fault line as we have seen with Russia and China reinvigorating themselves
globally and India likely to follow suit making the Hindu claim at least on an
economic level. In a further analysis Huntington even identified a civilization
clash point in the United States with the inflow of Latin American immigrants
into the nation (his solution a slow down followed by assimilation).

Huntington was invariably challenged on his model. Both the
far left and free trade liberals criticized him for downgrading the role of
economics (for different reasons of course) and playing to the vestiges of a
worldview that had been swept aside by the ideological struggle of the Cold
War. Others accused him of minimizing the nationalist (and religious) splits
within the civilizations that he outlined. His view certainly stood in contrast
to Fukuyama’s belief in a triumphant Western liberalism, let alone Karl Marx’s
stance of a Hegelian march towards Communism. Huntington though was resolute in
defending his paradigm and constantly warned optimists about the folly of
believing that the path of history was fixed along their specific ‘utopic’
trajectory.

Reflecting on Huntington I see him in a slightly different
light that makes him ever more relevant today. He articulated the reality that
Particularlism would not be discarded and indeed would live to define a future
that was already in the making (at the time of his writing the Balkan conflict
was in full swing). International universalism could not celebrate and would
have to put the champagne on hold for a while. From a Western perspective this
would come to haunt our civilization as it had the most to lose from a
resetting of a world order. Demographic
imbalance would speed up this transition.

Civilization Theory to some extent is what drives Trumpism. It
is a reinvention of the defencse of Western Civilization (albeit more American
focused) against the other. It is a reaction to the failed Internationalism of
the Bush presidencies, the Clinton Administration and its obvious fall from
grace under Obama. What drives Trumpism is a need to reverse decline. On one level it represents the Huntington view
reasserting itself against the consensus of the Fukuyama outlook. All the key
tropes of Trump – The Wall, Trade Protection, Non-Intervention, ‘Make America
Great’ are consistent with such a philosophy that has identified the threat and
is acting with deliberate intent. Protecting the civilization is key.

Brexit and other Anti-EU sentiments sweeping across the
European continent are a further illustration of the Civilization impulse
rejecting the perceived false messiah of Internationalism. It carries with it a
defense of culture that sees survival in a return to republic and away from the
promises of an amorphous empire centered on platitudes.

In a sense it has replaced once ossified left versus right
divide with a dichotomy of Civilization opposing Internationalism that seems to
cut across class lines and will in all likelihood emerge in the forefront of
policy across the West. The change may appear to have been sudden but the
potential was always there. What was needed was time and the right combination
of events to catalyze the realignment. It appears to have already happened.

I believe in the existence of a single power, an entity of unimaginable intelligence whose true essence cannot be defined. For convenience I will call this being God. It is God who created all of this universe and all possible universes past, present and future. Who or what God is supersedes explanation. God can destroy the universe as simply as it was created for God transcends all that is matter, energy and spirit. God is one.

I am best described as a Classical Liberal in that I champion democracy, human rights, private ownership of property, free enterprise, meritocracy, high levels of education, the rule of law and a complete openess to discussion and debate within society.

A person's ability to solve a problem depends on the perspective that you view yourself in relation to the problem. Always look down at the problem as though you are its master. Look up to the problem and you are lost from the beginning

Express the rhythm of one's thoughts in poetry but be careful not to allow the rhythm to dominate the ideas. It is the idea that is always paramount.